Caltrain has tried mightily to take measures against this human error. It's useful to view these attempts through a risk management lens: the risk is the product of the probability of a vehicle entering the tracks, multiplied by its consequence.
Reducing Probability
We can do a little bit of Street View tourism to see what solutions have been attempted so far to reduce the probability of a vehicle track incursion:
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Paint stripes give visual feedback, but such road markings are often not observed by the sort of driver who might not see that they are turning onto tracks. |
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Reflectors and Botts Dots keep a low profile to fit under passing trains, while giving visual and steering wheel feedback. In the gauge, they get beat up by equipment dragging under freight trains. This example is at Castro Street in Mountain View. |
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Rumble strips, similar to above solution, at Mission Bay Drive in San Francisco. |
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Solar reflectors go one step further by lightning up at night. The small solar cell at the top charges a battery that powers red LED lights when it is dark. This example is at 16th Street in San Francisco. |
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Speed bumps provide slightly more steering wheel feedback. This example is at Mission Bay Drive in San Francisco. |
All of these measures are probably effective to some extent, but they won't stop a vision-impaired or inebriated or inexperienced driver, especially when they are mindlessly following GPS directions to turn onto a street that immediately parallels the tracks, a common feature of the grade crossings with the highest incidence of vehicle track incursions.
Reducing Consequence
Before we can discuss reducing the consequence of a vehicle track incursion, we need to acknowledge just what the consequence is: at a minimum, the vehicle becomes stranded on the tracks, requiring extrication by a tow truck. At worst, there is a dangerous collision with a train.
Most vehicles will end up high-centered if they blunder onto the tracks because the rail is 7" 5/16 tall and the center of concrete ties dips lower, resulting in easily 9" of height difference between the surface of the ties and the top of the rail. This height exceeds the ground clearance of most SUVs. Once high-centered, a vehicle with open differentials (i.e., not-Jeep) loses traction and becomes stranded. The driver is unable to correct their mistake, and when they try, they often just make it worse by driving further onto the tracks.
Currently, Caltrain applies no mitigation to this consequence. Their entire risk mitigation approach to vehicle track incursions relies on prevention, by reducing the probability while accepting the consequence that a stranding is inevitable. It is not!
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| Anti-trespass panels in New York, on Metro North. Photo by Daniel Case. |
1) very strong vibratory feedback that the vehicle has departed the road, likely to induce brake application on a reflexive basis and avoiding a deeper incursion.
2) reduced height difference between the rail and surrounding surfaces, enabling a vehicle with low ground clearance to maneuver without becoming high-centered. The driver can self-extricate the vehicle.
While these rubber panels are primarily intended to prevent pedestrian trespassing, they would likely also work for cars if laid down for about 30 feet beyond the edge of a crossing. They are a passive solution with low operating cost, certainly a much more effective mitigation than CCTV or intrusion sensors with alerts integrated into the signalling system. All these expensive and technology-heavy solutions may prevent a collision, but do nothing about the need for a tow truck or the resulting service disruption. This makes anti-trespass panels an ideal solution that best addresses the need of Caltrain riders to arrive on time.
The south side of Churchill Avenue in Palo Alto would make an excellent location for a pilot installation.
I've wondered why there's not also a crossing gate across the tracks that opens when the one across the road closes.
ReplyDeleteAlmost all of these vehicle “track incursions” occur after dark. That tells us that if there was sufficient lighting of the tracks on either side of crossings so that drivers can clearly see the ROW as being a railroad and not a street (as in daytime), they would almost never mistakenly turn from crossings onto the tracks.
ReplyDeleteIt would also better light the roadway across the tracks and any markings on it.
Delete"NO TURNS" "IN XING" ["ZONE"] signs might be of some assistance with good road markings (red herringbone forward- and inward-pointing edge lines, included?) all better lit at night along with tracks to each side.
DeleteStripes are already listed. Lights would probably cost more to install, maintain and operate than anti-trespass panels. And these measures mitigate the probability, not the consequence. My point is you have to do both!
DeleteHow about this 'old' solution? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VF4hWvjC3g Originally the signalman would come down and manually close the gates.
ReplyDeleteAutomatic bollards? Would of course need to be connected to the signalling system, and/or the trains would need enough clearance (which I doubt they have).
DeleteSounds like a solid idea. By which I mean a slippery slope. But which I mean a rough idea.
ReplyDeleteCursory googling re anti-trespass panels (what a world where "hostile architecture" is A Thing), I didn't come across anything about bearing motor vehicle loads and wheel shear forces, or about compressibility (anti-high-centering), or about "very strong vibratory feedback". Just about "you can't walk here".
Not doubting you, but curious where this all came from. (And thinking it through a bit, the entirely hypothetical downside of a big-ass crossover SUV Canyonero somehow digging a hole with frantic wheel spinning doesn't seem that much different from high-centering. But you know, USA = lawsuits.)
Regardless, just this once, this might be a low-enough cost thing that Caltrain could be given a ***one-time-only*** permit to be a "world innovator", to throw down some lumpy mats at a couple spots, and just see what does or doesn't happen. (A world innovations just like CBOSS, only a billion dollars cheaper, and *actually* no downside to failure, and maybe even without endless deception and fraud.)
PS my take it is, as "Reality Check" suggests, 95% dangerously deskilled drivers blindly (literally blindly!) following Google Maps on their phone ("turn right in 100 feet") and not looking out the windscreen.
Same people who mow down pedestrians who "come out of nowhere, wearing dark clothing at night".
How much are lumpy rubber mats around the rails going to help with that? Maybe, maybe not, but maybe!
Hopefully such measures aren't an excuse to avoid grade separation.
ReplyDeleteLeast wanted, especially in busy metro areas, is closing any crossing.
Separations potentially offer more access and circulation with more crossings of the railroad right-of-way by all road users (not only by motorists), a bonus in addition to the primary benefits and motives, safety and reduction of collision risks and their consequences.
Even if the whole route won't be fully grade-separated, as it should be already, more separations are needed. The cost for them, though ...
Grade separation is always better, but Caltrain has cracked the code on how to make them cost two to three times as much as they should, which puts a serious damper on how many you can build.
DeleteClem: And as you already know, the cost also eats into what else can be done on the right-of-way, i.e., greatly increases opportunity costs, such as improved (safer) grade crossings in the indefinite meantime, to name only one example alternative.
DeleteThe Diridon station redesign planning team is recommending elimination of the “stacked” alternative, leaving the “at-grade” and “elevated” alternatives. They say they’ve figured out how to avoid impacting CEMOF and have determined that if VTA extends the Diridon BART station concourse it could allow for a more direct transfer, cutting walking times by 1 minute.
ReplyDeleteSorry, couldn't get past page 4 because it is just too funny/ridiculous. "We care about SAFETY" (big bold letters) -- meanwhile the artist simulation shows a giant stroad with pedestrians darting out into traffic on an unprotected zebra crossing. The bike lane is also unprotected.
DeleteGood Lord, just fire these consultant idiots (into the Sun).
Who could possibly have guessed that the stack would get sacked?
DeleteSo the Caltrain’s fiscally unconstrained draft 10-year Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) (starting on PDF page 11) has been updated and re-released. Lots to see and bemoan here.
ReplyDeleteOn PDF page 72, true “universal” level boarding currently looks to be a ~10-year, $660m project set for completion in 2035!
I think they've just re-badged their $40M/year station platform factory as "level boarding" and called it good. Why do something right when you can do it over and not be done until FY45? That's right, "FY36 and beyond" is another $380M at $40M/year which gives you a finish date of 2045 and also a very good idea of how urgent they think this project is.
DeleteMeanwhile, the EMUs can't even stick to the new timetable because the dwells are a horrific mess...
I also notice that the Redwood City four-track station (probably without four-track station approaches, because Caltrain will always Caltrain) is also scheduled out to "never," forever just beyond the ten year planning horizon.
Relevant side track:
ReplyDeleteIn the Netherlands the road infrastructure owner is legally responsible for accidents that could had been prevented if the infrastructure were up to some sort of high standards. I.E. not for someone drunk driving, but for accidents that happen due to bad planned or badly maintained infrastructure.
In Caltrains case the obvious thing would be to have presence detectors and super large signs that light up telling drivers to back out from the train tracks.
There is a great Youtubers called Build the Lanes that unless I've mixed things up talks about how the Netherland ended up with their current legislation and whatnot.
https://www.youtube.com/@buildthelanes/videos
@Clem: are ""vehicle track incursions" actually limited to "cars inexplicably turning onto the tracks"? I note the suspicious lack of a category for the more likely "cars still in the crossing when the gates go down," which suggests (to me) that is also a "track incursion". For @MiaM, much of the Caltrain ROW has major thoroughfares running parallel to the tracks on both sides (one is the famous El Camino Real, a 2 to 6 lane "stroad"). There are usually traffic lights on either side of a grade crossing, and when traffic is heavy you occasionally get someone who doesn't wait until there is room for their car on the far side of the tracks when the gates drop.
ReplyDeleteI think I've mentioned this before, but since perhaps a decade or a bit more the inside of the gates on level crossings in Sweden have labels instructing drivers to just drive through them if they get "stuck" inside the gates. Also in any somewhat urban area there is always four gates (for the road traffic, and additional gates for pedestrian and bicycle lanes) and the exit gates go down way later than the entry gates. In rural areas with no pedestrian or bicycle traffic "half gates" are sometimes used, i.e. only entry gates. Those would of course be unsuitable for Caltrain (except perhaps on some places along the route to Gilroy).
DeleteAlso this seems like an excellent case where presence detectors would be useful.
The time for gates to be down would vary depending on the likelihood of cars "getting stuck", as at times with enough traffic for this to happen. I don't know about FRA regulations and what Caltrain actually does, but again taking Sweden as an example the time the gates are down isn't always enough for a train to stop for an obstacle, just enough for any normal road traffic to empty out of the crossing. Having the gates down long enough for a fast train to be able to stop for anything stuck on the crossing would mean the gates being down for ages.
@MiaM: You can't just "drive through" when there are cars stopped in front and behind you, although some have tried.
DeleteVehicle incursions generally all occur when the gates are up and inactive.
DeleteAs I recall, regulations require gate warning times (activation time before train arrival) to be at least 20 seconds … and Caltrain generally aims for 25 seconds (giving a 25% buffer) … but the new electrification compatible clunky track-circuit-based “two speed check” (aka 2SC) crossing logic that replaced the older, more elegant constant warning time (CWT) often results in longer and inconsistent warning times based on train approach speed.
Consistently short warning times prevent a culture of driving around lowered gates, because drivers can observe & experience that when gates come down, a train passes through only 20-25 seconds later. Long delays may allow trains to stop short of crossings, but without quad gates, they would result in politically unacceptably-long delays and traffic backups, increasing the drivers’ temptation to drive around the entry gates. And indeed, Caltrain does not have a problem or history with crashes due to “drive-arounds.”
With only just a few recent exceptions, street crossings have entry gates only. Full four-quadrant gates (with obstruction detection) are typically only installed to qualify for train horn quiet zones. Since warning times are short (nominally 25 seconds), crossing obstruction detection merely holds the exit gates open until the crossing is unobstructed (or until the train passes!).
Oops, I forgot to mention, the new EMUs are all fitted with a mew Wireless Crossing Optimization System (from Wabtec, the PTC supplier), which, when working as intended and designed, inhibits the overly conservative track-circuit-based 2SC system from needlessly activating crossings too early (including just ahead of a stopping train), and thereby minimizing warning times (and therefore overall gate downtimes). Last I saw, there was no plan or budget to similarly equip any legacy diesel trains or UP freights.
DeleteA full activation cycle of the first 4-quadrant gates (with obstacle detection) at a Caltrain crossing. Installed as part of qualifying the first and only (so far!) Caltrain train horn quiet zone established in 2016 by the city (“town”) for its snooty train- & horn-hating neighbors at Fair Oaks Lane in sleepy and very wealthy Atherton. This crossing is immediately adjacent to the north end of what was their station.
DeleteAtherton has recently extended the QZ to cover Watkins Ave. (their only other crossing) as part of a station closure quid pro quo deal with Caltrain that helped fund quad gate installation there too.
@Reality Check: I'm still skeptical about what they're counting and why. For instance, at Broadway Burlingame crossing the distance from the nearest rail to the crosswalk at the light on California Drive is 50 feet. A number of trucks and cars have been hit when they get boxed in there. The last one was in July when (as a conductor put it) "a 65 foot truck stopped at the red light, unfortunately leaving about 10 feet on the tracks ." That's not a "vehicle track incursion"?
DeleteI was on the train that hit a boxed-in car at Ravenswood Ave a number of years ago and I've heard about (and sometimes delayed by) other such incidents during commute hours. I'm sure they've got this all handled.
@Marc:
DeleteGood point. This is in turn a failure of the regular road traffic lights that don't stop traffic before the level crossing if there isn't enough space on the other side of the level crossing.
In particular the railway signalling system could be designed to send a signal that tells that the gates will likely go down within the next minute or few minutes, and that could activate a mode for the traffic lights that ensures that there is always room for traffic to exit the level crossing.
Presence detectors could also work in conjunction with both the railway and traffic light signalling system.
Also, are there any MUTCD standard sign that forbids stopping? If so that hypothetical signal from the railway signalling system could activate a flashing "stopping forbidden" sign.
Don't know if it would help, but also a sign "exit your car and run away, train coming" could also be electronically controlled and light up if a car seems stuck and there isn't room to exit.
@Reality Check:
Wow, that down time seems super low. Also, surprised that all gates go down at the same time. Also surprised that there are crossings that aren't like this in developed areas.
The only situation where it seems reasonable to have such short times is if the gates are immediately after a station where the train stops (but then you kind of have to let the gates go down and then up again when the train stops, so perhaps better to have the stop after the crossing, and have the train run so slow that you can have the gates down for a really short period?).
Btw surprised that not almost all crossings are "quiet zones". In Sweden afaik trains only sound their horns where there are crossings without gates, possibly even only where there are crossings without lights. (I don't think there are many of those left).
Side track sad fact: The Swedish rail infra authority tried a simplified signal type, that just used the track circuits to light up a white light when there aren't any trains in the area, and posted signs to only cross when the light is on. Let's just say that that triggered Darwins survival-of-the-fittest when it comes to read and understand simple instructions, and eventually I think they all were replaced with regular signals, and/or the crossings were closed. A benefit of having the rail infra and the national road infra under the same authority is that they can relatively simply add roads along railways to give access to properties that would otherwise be sealed off if a rail crossing is closed. Sure, a rail-only authority could also do that but then they would have to have separate procedures for building and maybe even maintaining these roads, rather than just do it as part of all road work they already do.
@marc: I thought a "vehicle track incursion" is when a vehicle drives off the grade crossing and onto tracks? That didn't happen with the 65-foot truck stopped at a red light 50 feet from the track.
DeleteOut of curiosity: would a four-quadrant crossing gate have prevented that collision due to the crossing arm being unable to properly close?
AGAIN: Caltrain “incursions” are when a vehicle is driven (typically from a grade crossing by mistake) onto the tracks, and often gets stuck there.
DeleteTrains hitting vehicles illegally obstructing crossings, are collisions — not incursions.
There is no way for a vehicle to be hit at a properly working crossing without the driver first violating laws against stopping on tracks and (CVC §22526(d)) beginning to cross tracks before there is enough room on the other side to get safely all the way across without stopping.
Drivers chronically violate these laws ALL THE TIME at the busiest Caltrain crossings. Enforcement is rare and Caltrain and cities have (thus far) failed to install turnkey automated camera enforcement systems such as Rail Road-Safe.
Nearby traffic light controllers are already wired to immediately give traffic crossing tracks (and therefore scofflaw drivers illegally obstructing the crossing) a green light when a train approaches.
At the handful of crossings with quad gates, occupancy detection ensures the exit gates only close once the crossing is unoccupied.
US FRA regulations require four 96-110db horn blasts in a prescribed pattern for all crossings that are not in a locally-established & FRA-approved train horn quiet zone.
@Marc: I came upon the scene of that fatal 2015 Menlo Park Ravenswood crossing crash.
DeleteSeveral witnesses I casually interviewed said the SUV driver made no visible attempts to avoid being hit. They said she appeared to be obliviously looking down into her lap, possibly texting, as the SB express train, with its horn blasting, passed through the Menlo station. Some wondered if she wrongly thought she was OK because “normal” (non-express) trains would first stop at the station before slowly accelerating toward the Ravenswood crossing just to the south. In those cases the gates come down, and then time-out while a SB train stops at the station.
At any rate, any scofflaw driver paying attention on that crossing could’ve maneuvered out of the train’s path (eg pushing forward or back or over to the other side of the crossing) or at least exited their car.
@Reality Check: I'm not so much questioning this definition of "vehicle track incursion" which is likely correct, as asking why they're focused on addressing on that particular set of incidents this year, as opposed to the ones which I hear about most often (usually while waiting on the PA or SF platforms), "trespassers" and "collisions", neither of which warrants a mention in that presentation. I'm sorry, whether or not drivers are "illegally obstructing crossings" (which driving in the area at commute time shows is not all that uncommon) matters little, people are dead or maimed, engineers and conductors are traumatized, and hundreds of others are delayed for hours. Look at Broadway Burlingame in satellite photos, the obstruction zone is marked on the road, but is likely not visible from the far side of the tracks. There is room for at most three cars on the far side, if four cars head across while the light is green, the fourth will be in trouble if the first car has to stop. We have that problem at crossings throughout East Bay, that corridor is 4 tracks and it is at time difficult to figure out if there is room on the far side. All we really need is for everyone to be "perfect" drivers rather than the actual everyday dumbass drivers that are out there.
DeleteHow many actual deaths/injuries result from all of these "track incursions" and where are the "collision" counts?
Just to be annoying, I searched on "caltrain" and various combinations of "vehicle", "car", and "incursion". The periodic safety reports rarely mention this issue prior to 2019 (although I know it happens), starting in 2023 it became a "Big Thing". The only statistics I could find were counts of "train delayed" (I guess even stupid/drunk drivers are smart enough to call the police when they know they're stuck). Have they addressed all of the other safety issues, put level boarding on the back burner, and decided this is what they need to spend money on to avoid "delays"?
DeleteI can’t follow you or what point(s) you’re trying to make.
DeleteIncursions are not new. The consistent use of the term and semi-regular reporting of it as a separately-tracked incident category, along with the creation & filling of a Chief Safety Officer position in the wake of the San Bruno crash into on-track electrification work trucks are both relatively new.
Incursions only sometimes result in collisions … usually they get noticed and reported before that happens. A few have resulted in fiery crashes that scorched the train. Either way, they can result in major delays waiting for stuck vehicles to be removed and tracks to be inspected & cleared for resumption of train traffic.
The point of automated camera enforcement with a guaranteed moving violation citation for all forms of crossing violations 24/7/365 would be a very powerful (and therefore effective) deterrent & educational tool. The reason drivers roll stop signs, run lights, violate HOV lane rules, and speed is because they know the odds of being caught & cited are generally very low. So too with crossing violations. A guaranteed citation will very, very quickly and dramatically improve driver behavior.
Currently, violations rarely (almost never) result in citations.
I’m not an extraordinarily gifted driver, and I never have trouble not stopping on the tracks, regardless of congestion, location, or time of day. It really isn’t difficult to avoid entering the crossing unless there’s space to safely completely get your vehicle across. If you think it is, you’re not doing something right and need remedial instruction.
@Reality Check: You noticed, as the quote marks make apparent.
DeleteAny city that calls itself a town indeed is snooty. (As the italics make apparent, too)
@Reality Check: please help me address the confusion in my mind. Caltrain is a publicly owned organization, where are the actual safety statistics? Caltrain stopped publishing "Safety and Security Reports" in 2018, but even when they were publishing them there were few hard numbers other than employee injuries, arrests, interventions, citations, etc. Just how does one figure out how many members of the public were killed or injured on or near the Caltrain ROW, for whatever reason and whether or not it was their damn fault? How much money do they want to spend on Vehicle Track Incursions, and how do I as a taxpaying member of the public determine if this makes any sense?
DeleteI really appreciate Clem's insights as well as yours over the years in the comments, but people have blind spots. What kind of "Safety Performance Dashboard" spotlights a specific problem which (as far as I can tell) they've rarely been mentioned in the past (again, I know it happens), without even mentioning how many people got hit by trains? Did no one get killed last year? Thank you, that's was my whole point, I'll drop out of this thread now.
@Marc: when is getting hit by a train not one’s own damn fault? AFAIK, there is no legal way to get hit at any of Caltrain’s public crossings.
DeleteCaltrain does occasionally release summary stats on annual fatalities. However, they’re flawed in that deaths are broken down into intentional, unintentional, and pending by the county coroners to whom Caltrain defers categorization rulings … and who often take up to a year to notify Caltrain of their ruling. And, worst of all, they overstate the unintentional death rate because if intention cannot be established (by some unpublished criteria) the coroners default ruling is unintentional instead of the more likely intentional or a more honest & accurate 3rd category of “indeterminate.”
@Reality Check: This whole argument is getting rather silly. Guess what, the majority of people are not as bright as you are, they do stupid things all of the time. You can eat all of the delays that result and ignore the issues, or you can try to discourage people from doing those stupid things. You can also focus on a single stupid person problem because you think you can get some millions of dollars to fix it and ignore everything else. If the concept here is to reduce delays, which issues are most cost-effective to address? Should I just accept there is no way to tell, as Caltrain can't be bothered to collect (or maybe it's just publish) any statistics? The engineers and conductors certainly know when they inspect a the train for damage or go out with hefty bags to collect body parts, a rational organization would require the employees involved to provide written reports. They know, they just don't want to tell the rest of us.
DeleteWhat argument? And what about it is “getting silly”?
DeleteAnd Caltrain has long tracked sources of delay. A breakdown gets published in public board and/or committee meeting materials from time to time. But like probably most any public agency, they don’t publish or publicize everything they track.
OK, if they don't consider releasing statistics on the number of accidents to be part of their job, I'll piece it together an example from news reports. The Broadway Burlingame crossing has seen 14 collisions between trains and vehicles since 2016 with two fatalities. I found exactly one that was due to a track incursion, resulting in one injury. The rate of accidents at that crossing has been increasing in recent years, despite fewer trains. Why? It turns out that the City of Burlingame reworked the intersection between Broadway and California Drive a few years back (I wasn't able to find the exact dates) in order to make it more pedestrian and bike friendly. Fine, except what they did is add hard curbed islands at the corners and turn lanes and ended up moving the lights several feet closer to the tracks. What happened with that truck? The driver was apparently delivering cars to a dealer on Broadway, crossed the tracks (on a green light) and found that he couldn't negotiate the left turn onto California Drive with the island that was now there and was still desperately trying to make that turn when the train came. Stupid truck driver, he should have known better.
DeleteOne can also query “accident” (sic; should be incident) history in the FRA Office of Safety Analysis database for PCJX crossings in SF, SM & SC county.
DeleteFascinating, thanks! To make it a little easier for others, find the crossing you want to examine in the list that was linked, grab the crossing number, then click on Crossing, select Accident and enter the crossing number. That will give reports for all accidents at that crossing going back to the 80s.
DeleteFWIW (i know, not much) I extracted the data from the accident reports for Broadway Burlingame back to 1995 and put them in a spreadsheet. These are preliminary reports, with some basic facts but nothing else. Here's what I found in a total of 18 collisions in that period:
Delete1. Most collisions occur during the day, usually in clear weather. The one major exception was the track intrusion, when a 73 yo driver obviously got confused on a dark rainy night.
2. There was 1 collision in 1995, one each in 2008 and 2009, none until 2015, then 1 to 2 per year ever since.
3. Eastbound and westbound drivers are equally likely to get hit.
4. The 1995 accident was the only one where the driver clearly drove around the gates and got hit by the train, there was another in 2023 when the driver went around a "temporary barricade" (whatever that means).
5, All of the others are "Stopped on Crossing", ""Stalled or stuck on crossing", or "Trapped on crossing by traffic", the choice of which I'll guess is a matter of interpretation by whoever fills out the report.
6. 3 of the 18 collisions are with truck-trailers, another 3 with a "truck" (all seem to be box trucks). This surprises me, as I'd assume most truck drivers would be better trained than the average car driver. Or, the intersections on either side have issues that make it difficult for large trucks to clear the crossing, as was clearly the case in the most recent accident (although that is not detailed in the reports).
7. Most of the cars were clearly in the "foul zone" (the striped boxes on pavement on either side of the track), only a few were actually stopped on the tracks.
8. Several cars were unoccupied when the train hit, then the driver would get in and drive off. This confused me, then I realized if you know you're too close to the tracks when the gates go down, any attentive driver would jump out, watch from a distance, and those who had reasons to avoid answering any questions would take off in the car (if it was still drivable) or on foot.
The 1/24 accident might have been avoided with better lighting at the crossing. And, look at the Street View photos approaching the crossing from either direction, I'd forgotten just how mucked up that crossing/intersection is to get through from various directions. The distance from foul zone to traffic lights in both directions leaves legal space for exactly two cars. I'd also love to know how all those lights are synchronized and whether the cycles are in any way connected to the crossing signals.
BTW, I figured the NTSB might have more detailed reports, but no, they only investigate certain accidents, like the infamous collision with the hi-rail work trucks. This was all interesting, if someone were asking me to do this at my day job, I'd download all reports for all crossings, use some tools I have to extract the data from the forms and do a real analysis. But, I know no one really cares, particularly at Caltrain.
@Marc, Caltrain (and, I believe, SP before it) has long had traffic signal signal preemption at signalized intersections adjacent to grade crossings.
DeleteIt’s easy to observe when a street parallel to the tracks suddenly suffers a preempted/truncated green cycle when an approaching train causes the traffic on the crossing street to instead get an immediate green to give scofflaws illegally fouling the tracks a chance to move off the crossing.
@Reality Check: I would assume as much, but I still ask, what is going on with that crossing that causes cars to mostly get "clipped" (rather than obliterated) once or twice a year? We can say it's drivers not following the rules and that they need to be better educated, but that's equivalent to saying "nothing can be done" short of full grade separation (which they should do in any case).
DeleteOne recurring scenario is when an emergency vehicle approaches on the parallel street, causing crossing traffic (even with a crossing-preempted green light) to stop and fail to clear the crossing. This killed someone at Whipple a few years back, and I suspect it happens more often than it is recorded as root cause.
DeleteClem is right, and it’s why scofflaws cannot and shouldn’t rely on preemption to allow them to move off the crossing and get across El Camino (or whatever signalized intersection they’re facing).
DeleteAs I mentioned earlier, there is something that can be done: I’ve been suggesting automated camera enforcement to staff for years.
A guaranteed moving violation citation for every violation will work wonders to improve driver behavior.
I'm sure automated camera enforcement will work just about as well as red light cameras did (funny how few of those are still functioning). The main issue with automated cameras is that not something that a city will just buy and install, they contract with a for profit company to install them, mail out the "citations" (which they're not), and collect the fines, all in exchange for a large and periodically increasing cut, which tends to upset the constituents, particularly in places like Menlo Park and Palo Alto.
DeleteBTW, let's look at the star of the vehicle intrusion show, Churchill Ave., for another example of just how messed up a simple crossing can be. The eastbound traffic lights are on the east side of the tracks, the foul zones are basically unmarked (just a single faded line on each side), and there is room for exactly one car (not a truck) in each lane after the gate. They could move the EB traffic lights to the more sensible west side of the tracks, but that would be too easy. To cut the reported 7 average intrusions per year, they've at least tried putting reflectors at the edge of the roadway. Maybe they should try putting a few illuminated red LEDs at the edge, or put in another streetlight so there is a bit more indication at night or bad weather that you really don't want to turn quite yet.
Red light cameras work quite well all over the world. Their “failures” in the US was (and remains) institutional & political.
DeleteAs criminologists and common sense will both tell you, the key to deterrence lies in the certainty of being caught (cited) — not in the severity of the punishment. Which why so many illegally roll stop signs, run red lights, speed, cheat in HOV & HOT lanes, and foul RR grade crossings despite the tiny risk of a multi-hundred-dollar citation.
It’s a no-brainer that those casually-made violations would quickly become rare if everyone knew each would be virtually guaranteed to result in a fine & moving violation on the driving record.
@Reality Check: fine put in your cameras 8^)
DeleteBut, before you do it, look at some supporting evidence on the "satellite view" of the Churchill Ave. Crossing. See the eastbound pickup stopped at the Alma St intersection? That's not even a full size pickup (it's only 16 feet long, they range up to 22 feet). Note the location of the tailgate relative to the track and crossing gate. And, note that the truck is short of the stop line, as the driver probably can't see it if they get any closer. What you're doing here is asking a Paly student who's been gifted an F-250 (don't laugh, it's Palo Alto) to judge from 60 feet away whether they can safely fit into the space across the tracks. I guarantee you, at least 50% will very optimistically get it wrong. Most people, in my experience, have abysmal depth perception. Before enforcement, maybe try not setting up traps for people like me.
@Reality Check: "Red light cameras work quite well all over the world. Their “failures” in the US was (and remains) institutional & political."
DeleteOn the list of institutional & political failures that I'm worried about in the US, the inability of city and county governments to deal with the problems created by outsourcing stop light enforcement to private companies is near the bottom.
BTW Clem, zooming all of the way in, those do appear to be solar lane marking lights on both sides of the Churchill Ave. crossing. Caltrain must know by now if it had any impact on the number of vehicle track incursions, which is something that they might have mentioned.
Delete@Marc, Caltrain started lining the edges of some grade crossings using the solar-recharged LED-equipped “Botts Dots” for many years now. Some use white LEDs, some use red ones. It started back during Joe (fired for embezzlement to build a secret station apartment for himself) Navarro’s reign as COO … he called them “turtles.”
Delete@Reality Check: The severity affects the cost, which is evaluated with the risk of getting caught. Leaving appropriate penalties for violation aside, red light, railroad crossing incursion, crosswalk incursion (particularly when crosswalks are occupied), even stop sign cameras would now be welcome in addition to speed cameras and eventually, Intelligent Speed Assistance (smart speed limiters in vehicles). In a way it's ugly, but it's characteristic of how things have "progressed" in later years.
DeleteThere's also the possibility of vehicle barriers, as has been said before, that can block vehicles physically so they cannot enter the crossing. There's a specific instance for the use of these, for grade crossing train speeds of 111-125 mph, which is foregone to settle for 110 mph and no cost and process for the barrier approval and construction. There's no reason why a barrier should be limited to that application, though. Barriers could also be used to protect crosswalks with advance deployment in intersections that also would stop red-light running if one wanted really to crack down with fiendish sentiment. (In practice, allowance must be made for right-turning vehicles. Separate intervals are one solution.)
@Marc:
Delete"2. There was 1 collision in 1995, one each in 2008 and 2009, none until 2015, then 1 to 2 per year ever since." This is to me a clear indicator that something is less than ideal with the traffic lights.
The traffic lights on both sides of the railway crossing shouldn't led vehicles enter the railway crossing unless there is room for them to exit.
Camera detection or just "metal detectors" buried in the roadway, sensing occupancy, could easily have the traffic lights turn red when there isn't enough room for the vehicles to exit the railway crossing.
Ideally the crossing with Carolan Avenue should be closed. Traffic can use Caddilac Way as a detour. A question is also if California Drive really needs to be connected the way it is? How about putting a median in Broadway and only allow right turns to/from California Drive, with give way signs for entering Broadway? Kind of like a free flowing intersection.
Re emergency vehicles: Do those have traffic light preemption in any way? In some cities with loads of street based / street adjacent transit the emergency services uses the same preemption system that the transit vehicles use. I get that emergency services are allowed to drive past red lights, but certain crossings should be treated as "extra red". Don't know what the optimal system is, but I assume that emergency service vehicles already have some sort of online connection and whatnot, so it should be possible to add a way to tell the driver that it's better if a patient in their ambulance dies or a murderer gets away from the police than risking a train colliding with vehicles, and have the emergency service vehicle turn off their sirens. If it's too much work to integrate with any existing system, there could be a type of traffic light that don't have any meaning to regular drivers, that indicate that emergency services should adhere to red lights even if it risks lives. There could of course be a limit, say risking ten lives or so is the threshold for anyway pushing through a red light.
@Reality Check:
I mostly agree re criminologists, but I will add that having hard punishments for running a red light or not coming to a full stop at a stop sign (in combination with reasonable use of stop signs v.s. yield signs) works wonders over here in Sweden. The only case where people run a red light is if it's been red for ages in an empty crossing, I.E. some sort of malfunction, and then people tend to try to reverse a bit to trigger any sensors before running a red light. The punishment is having your drivers license withdrawn. If you have had your license for at least two years you get it back after a few months for the first two times, but at the third time or if you've only had it for less than two years you have to retake it, with the mandatory theory test and driving test and mandated short safety class, mandated lesson for driving on slippery roads and whatnot. The same regulations apply to driving 30km/h over the speed limit (20mph) but it seems more common that people are speeding, but usually they do it at 29km/h or lover over the speed limit and mainly on rural roads, highways and whatnot.
=======================
Who owns Burlingame Broadway and adjacent streets?
This seems hard to find out for anyone who don't know that much about USA.
Reading Wikipedia kind of only tells that US Highways are owned by the states and/or local cities, but the article on US 101 / Bayshore Freeway don't tell if it's the state of California or the local city that owns it in this area.
What I'm aiming at is that if the US101 is owned by the state the local city could put pressure on the state to finance a better connector, i.e. a grade separated road all the way up to El Camino Real.
The luke warm take would be to just close the freeway connector to Broadway. Would be highly impopular but would also reduce loads of traffic crossing the railway.
Calling for gate hardening (ie impenetrable barriers) suggests a failure to understand problem. ROW incursions and crossing blockers occur between trains when the gates are upright and inactive. As mentioned earlier, due to relatively short & predicable warning times, collisions almost never result from people impatiently bypassing activated / lowered crossing gates.
DeleteQuad-gates, while preventing unobstructed “drive-arounds” (that aren’t actually a significant problem on Caltrain like they are on Florida’s Brightline), are mainly sought and paid for to reduce the FRA’s calculated “quiet zone risk index” (QZRI) enough to qualify for a train horn quiet zone.
@MiaM, here’s my understanding: with few exceptions for state-owned & -controlled highways, streets crossing the tracks are owned by whatever local city or county jurisdiction they’re inside of. Street owners (eg cities) have an easement across the RR-owned ROW at grade-crossings. RRs are responsible for maintaining the actual track crossing surface and crossing protection equipment, but this is typically done in cooperation and consultation with the street owner.
@Anonymous:
DeleteWhere is the typical switch of ownership for service interchanges / connections with the local road network and a controlled highway? Is just the on/off ramps and maybe the bridge/tunnel crossing the highway, or are some part of the local roads owned by the highway owner?
This seems like a reason to have one single federal entity that oversees all transport, or at least rail and road. If the FRA and the federal DOT (or whatever the regulatory body is called?) were the same entity, they could easily identify the highway connector as the main culprit of the accidents on the level crossing.
For amusement (I may have mentioned this before), the Hankyu Railway Awaji Station grade separation project in Osaka. Two heavily used dual track commuter lines currently intersect at a grade level station, which causes traffic congestion for both car and train traffic in the area. So, a 20 year long project to build a new elevated two level station, with new double deck viaducts coming in from four directions. Much of it is being built over the existing tracks without impacting daily service. A lot of the construction at night using pre-cast concrete. There have been schedule slips and cost overruns, but it will get done. I was shocked the first time I passed through there (my daughter was attending high school for a year near Kita-Senri).
ReplyDeleteSomehow, I can't imagine Caltrain ever managing a project with that kind of scope and complexity.
Oh, look, a Street View image from 2011 with an amusing sign. They markers likely were put in then, I'm glad Caltrain is on top of these problems.
ReplyDeleteThere have been several rounds of projects at Churchill over the years. But the LED-lit Botts Dots weren’t installed quite that long ago.
DeleteThe current project at Churchill has been dragging on for years. The latest update (PDF page 33) now still projects a 3/27/2025 project close-out with yet another 100+ days of delay due to some work the city still !! hasn’t done first.
The solar markers first show up in September 2018, so they were present for all 27 incursions in the chart. Either the lights work or they don't, maybe they might mention which it is, along with all of the other things they've tried? The PowerPoint shows one improvement for Churchill Ave. they are contemplating is painting the entire crossing red, which will likely do nothing to prevent incursions.
DeleteThat latest update does show how much a failure to maintain proper clearances by Caltrain staff cost them:
Delete- Include $5,335,224 for Stadler’s Repair of Damaged EMU Cars
I bet that individual leaves his tailgate hanging in the "foul zone", too.
City of Palo alto had an update on the Churchill crossing at their September Rail Committee meeting. I guess they now are looking into adding quad gates as part of their quiet zone project.
DeleteIf you really want to be ambitious at Churchill, why not have quad gates come down whenever the light is red? That way no one can stop on the tracks.
Delete@Marc: safety measures aren’t a binary “either they ‘work’ or they don’t.” And since crashes and suicides historically ebb and flow over the decades, and since there is no parallel universe in which we can compare the same crossing with and without a particular safety measure (eg. LED-lit Botts Lots) holding all other factors equal, it’s really not so easy to know with any certainty just how effective at reducing a relatively infrequent event type a particular safety measure is.
DeleteThat said, because they’ve been doing it for years now, it seems staff believes the dots are at least effective enough to continue using and maintaining (i.e. worth the cost & effort).
My guess is they’re right … and it isn’t as much “safety theater” as all the FRA mandated mindless horn-blowing & bell-ringing.
@Anonymous: (a different Anonymous, here) I'm in favor of even more measures than quad gates where applicable that I'd like used these days, but the crossings are open when the lights aren't red (and gates are not down) and the motor vehicles can be driven on the tracks at any time.
DeleteI'm wrong, the markers were installed in the 2017 to 2018 time frame.
ReplyDeleteMy point is this: they've been trying little things for many years to reduce the probability of drivers turning onto the tracks. It evidently doesn't resolve the problem. That's why it's time to attack the problem by reducing the consequence of driving onto the tracks, not just the probability.
DeleteClem, don't overlook or neglect trying bigger things to reduce the probability.
DeleteThose are all fine, but let's not ignore mitigation of the consequence (vehicle stranding). It's not "either, or," it's "and." Mitigating risk is done by operating on the probability AND the consequence, that's just risk management 101.
DeleteSorry, I obviously didn't make it clear that I wasn't suggesting this was safety theater, my objection was that after having read and written many safety reviews in the past, the ones Caltrain provide are among the worse I've seen. They totally lack any needed context.
DeleteFor background, I spent 20 years as a software development manager and can't even count the times I spent an hour or so "discussing" with an "engineer" why it doesn't matter that they think the users are stupid and incapable of following some arcane set of rules, they had to fix their code so it was convenient for their customers, or they could go work someplace else.
After that I ended up doing research in what used to be called "construction engineering management" helping PhD students figure out how collect and organize data for, among other things, construction safety reviews (a single accident can erase any profit on a project, killing a bystander has bankrupted more than one company).
Finally, I was a long time pilot in a peculiar and quite dangerous form of aviation, flying/racing high performance sailplanes in the mountainous regions of the southwest. I did annual safety reviews for various local and national organizations, read numerous NTSB reports, and even participated in a few accident investigations (the NTSB never did any full investigations unless a well known person was involved).
All this to say that if one of the students showed up with a "Safety Performance Dashboard" like that one, I'd nicely ask them to come back again when they're ready to be serious. what that report suggests to me is the kind of throw safety measures against the wall and see what sticks attitude which is all too common. We often work in tandem with sociologists on safety issues, as often the first question to be answered is "why are people doing these stupid things", the answer is often that by the time things went south, they had no better options left.
@Marc, that’s a whole lot of words without any specific suggestion(s). Maybe think about making a focused, constructive comment and/or letter to the board about how staff ought to improve their Safety Performance Dashboard.
Delete@Anonymous: I think Marc rather clearly gets the message through that Caltrain should actually do a good job with their accident reports.
Delete@Marc: It might not be security theater, but it might be an example of "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity", or rather incompetence.
A parallel can be drawn to the discussion of making time tables, optimizing run times and whatnot, where I think a bunch of us who comment on this blog seem to agree that Caltrain lacks experience.
TBH Caltrain is too small of an operation to actually have enough in-house knowledge. This is yet another reason for having publicly owned railways in general. Sure, the freight railways probably actually have staff or reliable consultants that can do all this type of work, but I doubt that they would be willing to act as a consultant for publicly owned railways as they would have to act different in that the goal then would be what is best for society rather than company profit, and this might make it glaringly obvious that some of the actions taken by private freight railways aren't in the best interest of society. (I.E. calculate just what it costs to repair/scrap a loco and give some compensation to their driver for a level crossing accident, as compared to the cost to society of losing citizens).
@Anonymous: I am not Professor Marc or Dr. Marc PhD, I'm just a soon to retire research software engineer with a long time interest in safety issues. Caltrain has two world class universities available that do safety engineering work, but I'm not aware of any such contacts in the 20 years I've been working in this area. CAHSR has worked with us on project scheduling and organizational research, it's a bit early for safety work.
DeleteGiven the sparse amount of actual data available it's essentially impossible to make any useful comments. An actual research project would either be provided data by Caltrain itself, or would obtain it through use of CPRA. I can describe (somewhat oversimplified) the way such a process normally works for us in the construction field:
1. Interview senior management
2. Collect and analyze any available data
3. Categorize each of the incidents/accidents
4. Observe, take pictures, and videos of the work processes in action
5. Interview the workers during breaks about why they did certain things the way they did (sometimes there are hundreds of hours of interviews in total).
6. Then spend weeks to months coming up with specific recommendations
The whole point is to determine the causal chain for each category of incident, then figure out how the process can be altered such that workers less frequently get to the end of that chain.
Drivers are programmed to stop at red lights and go on green, a momentary distraction is all it takes to cause one to misjudge whether it is safe to cross the tracks. The fact that three truck-trailers were hit at Broadway alone should be a giant red flag. As for vehicle traffic incursions, if better lighting isn't solving that, Caltrain could actually try to figure out why people end up on the tracks, by, you know, asking them (if they're still with us). Also note the level of detail that Caltrain provides about injuries to their own workers (likely because the unions expect it), yet there is not a single word about deaths and injuries to the public. That's why I think this "Safety Performance Dashboard" is bullshit.
@Clem: Yes, vehicles going onto and getting stuck on tracks has to be mitigated. Most preventive measures at crossings usually are things activated as a train approaches, while the road is open to users at all other times and there is no timetable for road users to divert onto tracks!
ReplyDeleteAn HOV lane violation ticket is a minimum $490 fine with signs plastered every few miles. Los Angeles has a fine for $30 for parking on train tracks. Clearly we put a higher value on keeping solo drivers out of HOV lanes and vehicle out of train tracks.
ReplyDeleteCaltrain, as a government entity, already sets penalties for fare evasion, so how hard would it be to set a penalty of $500 for blocking tracks and put up large sign at all the crossing along with a webcam to send tickets to violators.
Side track:
DeleteAre there variable fines, that adjust according to income level?
As an example, in Sweden we have what's called "dagsböter" which is adjusted for income level. So someone with a high salary would get a way higher ticket than someone unemployed. IIRC there is a minimum level, I.E. students, housevives and whatnot don't get a free pass.
@Marc, the board & staff won't see your safety dashboard critique or suggestions if you only post them here.
Delete@Martin, high HOV lane violation fines are not a deterrent to rampant cheating because the odds of being caught are minuscule. As with ALL traffic citations, grade crossing violation citations are hundreds of dollars (ask me how I know 🤑) after all mandatory fees that dwarf the official bail amount are included ... So like with all moving violations, the net citation cost is of little deterrent value or relevance unless the odds of being cited are high.
@MiaM, traffic fines are not scaled to income or wealth.
I used HOV as an example, because it's one of those violations where the fine amount is posted on the road. There isn't a simple easy way to fix this, and incursions should be tackled from multiple angles. Making sure there ARE fines, posting signs with fines, better lane markers, would all help contribute to reducing the problem.
DeleteAlso, since there's enough clearance between the tracks for the overhead poles, are we sure there isn't enough space for a "Do Not Enter" sign that's not much wider than the allowed clearance that could be placed at crossings between the two tracks?
@Martin, yes, and as the published cheat rate stats (or any driver paying attention) can tell you, HOV violation fine warning signs don’t discourage rampant cheating. But if the odds of actually being cited were nearly 100% due to cameras (that unfortunately can’t reliably count occupants), the fine could be as low as $20 and cheating would nearly disappear. Advertising huge fines does not result in widespread compliance … but the certainty of every violation being caught — as with camera enforcement — does.
DeleteIf it were all underground, as some Palo Alto NIMBYs want, none of this would be a problem.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of underground, while the concern about the unneeded very wide single-bore deep tunnel for BART is old news, it was made new news again today (10 Oct).
Here it is again (video). Breezy, but still entertaining
Tunnels would be expensive, but something worth considering is putting Caltrain tracks at a lower level, and deck over parts of it, but still keep most of it out in the open. At those places where there are lots of grade crossings in a row this might be worth considering.
DeleteSea level and flood water from heavy rain and whatnot would need to be considered though. Seems like a bad idea to have public transit fail in a severe weather situation.
You misspelled “grade separated” — as in: “none of this would be a problem if it were grade separated.”
DeleteYes, earlier @Anonymous. ("None ...") I don't advocate a tunnel or trench, which has serious problems, but elevated on an embankment and better, a viaduct, i.e., an aerial structure. Making the Peninsula line fully grade-separated should have been done prior to World War II, probably, but if not, then should have been done by the early 1970s and probably late 1940s, early 1950s.
Delete@MiaM: In addition to tunneling and relocation or complete removal from the Peninsula, some Palo Alto NIMBYs (the real ones are there, not the nearly 100% of instances of calling people that ineptly or dishonestly, when they aren't) and contemporary types envision a covered trench with parkland, a bike trail, or what else, more housing built on top of it. That's in addition to NIMBY activism, some of it fighting anything at all to be added for high-speed trains to join Caltrain trains. The city of Palo Alto also has been creating notoriety for itself with hopes and dreams despite learning earlier that a tunnel or trench would be a poor idea.
Here you are, spanning just over a decade. The first, older blog entry is among the best known.
https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2009/04/joy-of-tunnels.html
https://caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2019/01/palo-alto-designing-in-vacuum.html
To that you can add this, for example.
https://www.cityofpaloalto.org/files/assets/public/v/1/transportation/rail/connecting-palo-alto/rail-trench-and-tunnel-white-paper.pdf
Meanwhile, BART and VTA in San Jose are just being stupid and working with those in the city and South Bay with certain egos and a small city complex. Assuming a subway even would be the best idea versus aerial, the obvious thing to do would have been to use the same, existing designs for BART underground segments and stations already created and applied elsewhere in the system. Why be more much more costly, riskier, and also inconsistent just for stupid bragging rights? (Well, you know those people...)
@MiaM: Note that there are real, serious NIMBYs in Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Atherton (or "PAMPA"), on the southern Peninsula, who don't want more trains added, are wary of anything new, and would like Caltrain hushed if not relocated or removed. (Atherton is so wealthy it has more clout and has achieved more than the other cities.) With the high-speed rail project and new trains, there was a lot of noise wanting those trains rerouted across the Bay at the Dumbarton crossing site, to connect to San Jose in the southern East Bay, and others have wanted the high-speed trains to end at San Jose rather than at San Francisco. The detour with Dumbarton reminds me of the hard-core NIMBYs in two counties in Florida who didn't complain about the freight trains, but had a visceral phobic, with more loathing than fear, of passenger rail service being introduced in Southeast Florida, and even wanted this kind of detour considered! It wasn't just the boaters objecting to many more bridge closures. It was animal hatred of the new passenger trains coming to and through their two counties. They were made this detour wasn't considered, in Southeast Florida. (The sharp curves at Stuart are part of this area. There is all manner of fighting over a station there, a natural place where trains must slow, anyway.)
DeleteThey were angry the CSX detour around their counties, to Lake Okeechobee and back, wasn't considered(!). That's what you call NIMBYs. (or "irrational NIMBYs")
http://www.botecomm.com/bote/rail/images/sugar_overview.png
@Anonymous (both of you, if you are more than one person :) ) :
DeleteYeah, I agree that an elevated railway would be better, both for build cost reasons and for protection of weather events and climate change and whatnot. I suggested at trench as that is an easier sell to the NIMBYs.
A way for Caltrain to handle those NIMBYs and more so the local cities that seems to have programmed their traffic lights so cars get stuck on the crossings, is just to have the gates lowered for as long as it takes for a train to brake if a vehicle is stuck on the rails.
Worst case if there is no money for grade separations, the cities don't reprogram their traffic lights, and Caltrain can't do something to increase the fine for blocking a crossing, maybe they could use automatic spikes that punctures the tires of cars ending up on the crossings. That would be purely a punishments and would in each individual case not increase safety but rather decrease, but on a larger scale it would deter people at least from knowingly enter a level crossing that there isn't room to exit. I don't think this idea would fly, but it's the kind of thing that you could float around to kind of scare the traffic light engineers to actually reprogram the traffic lights so cars don't get stuck.
Btw I don't know if it's just rare cases reported in media or if suing everyone for everything is a common thing in USA. If it's common I think a worst-case solution would be to attempt suing the local cities, their contractors and anyone involved in making decisions and actually doing what was decided in programming the traffic lights. For single cases it's hard to argue that the traffic lights or road infrastructure in general were to blame, but since it seems like the accidents have increased in the late 2010's something seems to have changed, and I assume that it's the traffic lights.
re NIMBYs: It might be worth also floating ideas about removing their beloved highways. Simple rendered pictures of transit oriented medium/high density development, with happy pedestrians walking their dog and people riding bikes on a sunny day, with a tram on dedicated tracks passing by, would cause those NIMBYs to have a heart attac (kind of :) ). The point of this is just to act as a counter balance to their anti-transit stance.
Re NIMBYs not wanting transit: There is this idea that transit brings "lower class citizens" to upper class neighborhoods, and reduces property values, or whatnot. Or brings in people who don't vote for the same politicians as the existing population. Kind of a sort of gerrymandering, maybe.
@MiaM, well, there is more than one Anonymous person here, but I'm the only me.
DeleteA trench has been an idea among many about as long as there has been a tunnel. I suspect some favoring the trench and covering it aren't captured by imagination as the more faddish younger ones are about land use planning atop the tracks, but rather than a trench, with or without a cover, should be cheaper than a tunnel. (Though a cut-and-cover tunnel versus a trench first and foremost that also happens to be covered isn't different to many)
I believe what upsets the NIMBYs is change, or introduction, the "threat" of anything new or different. The neighbors obviously don't like the idea of more, or faster (and louder) trains with any high-speed rail project, but some also don't want change from Diesel to electric, though it's for the better. The worse reaction to Brightline in two of southeastern Florida's counties (again, when freight trains have long run there), at a visceral level, is pathologically harsh.
Tire shredders activated by traffic law violations have been thought of before, including at stop signs.
I don't believe dreamy imagery of multi-unit housing and car-free frolicking appealing to activist kids detached from reality but aimed at the NIMBYs is worth it. Nor is aiming it at anybody else.
Ironically, Caltrain and BART survive because they are more convenient and also often more practical and economical than the challenge and cost not only of driving, but also of parking in downtown San Francisco (and other parts can be challenging and costly, too). That includes for commuters, for plenty of high-paying jobs where BART was intended to keep it alive. Prior to the pandemic, this was more noticeable. The City also has other contemporary problems.
Caltrain’s Chief Safety Officer Mike Meader will be presenting the following Safety Update (including updated track incursion data with planned or proposed grade crossing safety measures) at tomorrow’s October 16th Citizens Advisory Committee meeting beginning at 17:40.
ReplyDeleteAs with all public Caltrain meetings, in-person and virtual (via Zoom) public comment is welcome on this and other agenda items … so a good opportunity for @Clem & @Marc and others with ideas and suggestions to weigh in.
The soon to be finalized full draft 10-year Capital Improvement Plan is now up … and with the Appendix B which actually details the listed projects.
ReplyDeleteOne wonders what the recently-developed “roadmap of cost-effective improvements the agency can take with platform-raising” mentioned under “Level Boarding” on page B-40 actually looks like.
On B-45 under “Electric Fleet for Service to Gilroy” we see an EAC (estimated at completion) price of $300m for 6 additional BEMUs.
But on B-58 we have one of many busy-work and/or head-scratcher items like “Platform Lengthening Needs Assessment” for 10-car trains at 14 stations, including College Park. Seriously!?
I'm not sure how to comment, as I have no idea how that station currently operates... So there are two trains a day that stop here.
DeleteBeyond that, how does this work? In the morning, are students instructed to board a specific car, so they can all get off from the same set of doors operated by the conductor?
Which of the 5 tracks do the NB and SB trains use?
I have a PRA pending on these level boarding materials. My key takeaway from the Capital Improvement Plan is that level boarding is being kicked out past the 10-year planning horizon, which is Caltrain telling you that they don't want to do it and will never do it. Actions speak louder than words.
Delete"Caltrain procured the current PTC system in 2019 and it is nearing technological obsolescence."
DeleteOh what a sentence
@Bryan, and what’s more is that Caltrain’s COO explained today that the ongoing problem with the EMUs suffering new wheel flat spots is largely (if not entirely?) now due to the PTC system mysteriously, inexplicably causing trains to go into emergency braking up to 15 times per day!
DeleteSometimes when they have trouble resetting & re-synching the train’s PTC system, they need to do a full train “reboot” which takes around 15 minutes!
They’re not sure why this is happening now with the EMUs since PTC has been working for years on the legacy trains.
Other points of interest:
* Caltrain has lost over 5,000 feet of copper to metal thieves so far; so high aluminum (vs. copper) content impedance bonds will be tried.
* they’re investigating how & if they can better manage the mechanically-deployed door steps to trim dwell times, as Clem earlier suggested.
* UP-delivered EMUs also suffered flat spots en route from the factory; this will be closely monitored in future deliveries (next year)
* increased EMU horn noise complaints making the news have merit; Stadler had set horns to 104 db … so now staff is asking Stadler to adjust them all to 96 db (2 db above the 94 db FRA minimum to help guard against potential future liability claims of non-compliance).
* trains must stop with some doors off the platform to board PNAs (“persons needing assistance”) at stations with not-yet-repositioned-for-EMUs short “mini-high” platforms (eg Belmont), requiring crews to make announcements that only some train doors will be opened … potentially resulting in delays for alighting riders to move through the train to reach opened doors.
* at stations that have not yet received mini-highs (due to contractor delays), crews must alight, retrieve & use clunky, wheeled, hand-cranked lifts stored in locked cages on the platform. This adds around 3 unexpected minutes to dwell time at intermediate stations for each PNA boarding or alighting.
@Bryan:
DeleteWas newer tech available in 2019, as in FRA approved and whatnot?
@Reality Check:
Are the track circuits AC or DC? I assume AC. If so, why? With DC you don't need impedance bonds and whatnot, you just have one rail be the contiguous ground and on the other you have insulators for each block section, and you kind of apply a really large ohm meter across the rails to tell of there is a vehicle on the track or not. Not sure what the specs are but I assume perhaps 10-20V open circuit and a few amps short circuited in order to reliably give a correct signal.
There is still potential for wire theft, but still.
Re horn noise: I'm surprised that there aren't two loudness levels, one for everyday mandatory horn use, and another louder level for emergency use. I've probably already written this many times before in the comments, but the solution is to not use horns unless there is some irregular danger, like for example unauthorized people or vehicles on the tracks or whatnot. The only sound that is reasonable form a railway in an urban environment, except the "mechanical sounds", is a not that loud dinging sound just before and while the gates is going down at a level crossing.
@MiaM: there's this tiny little detail that at least one of the rails is the return for the 25kV AC traction power. (Some of the AC current also flows through the ground.) The copper being stolen is impedance bonding to ensure good connectivity of the traction rail. The topic of two-rail track circuits in conjunction with overhead electrification is non-trivial.
DeleteOne good explanation can be found at https://ocs4rail.com/, though it largely follows British practice with a nod to TSIs.
PTC being obsolete does kinda make sense - since Caltrain has something akin to PTC version 1.0 - that's kinda like getting Windows 3.0.
DeleteOriginal NY Subway signals were largely electro-mechanical components that could still be manufactured (at a cost) 50 years later. This is simply no possible if you want to buy a part that's like a Pentium chip from 2000.
The longetivity of the system depends on how isolated the components are. If all your features are part of the same software package, then it'll work great for a while, but not for a decade. If it's composed of many "apps", then it becomes more of an IT component upgrade problemI
@Anonymous: While that book is a good read, it seems like it doesn't really go into how electrification interacts with signaling.
DeleteSure, it's not intended to be about signalling, but the principles of track circuits in combination with electrification would fit in that book.
I was about to write that I don't get why the impedance bonds are needed, but the reason isn't the track circuits but rather PTC.
The solution is to replace it with a system that uses balises, like ERTSM/ETCS.
Like back in the stonge age, track circuits that not only detects the presence of trains but also sends messages to the trains were top notch for metro systems in say the 1950's or so, but it's time to move on to other systems.
@MiaM: an accelerating EMU can draw several MW of power. (They can also feed about as much back into the line when doing regenerative braking.) For simplicity of calculation: 2.5 MW at 25 kV means 100 A current, but a Stadler KISS can draw up to 6 MW. This has to flow along the rails to the closest traction substation. Even with modern electrification, this is a long enough distance (and the rails are meh enough conductors) that the current will spread out somewhat, namely it will flow through not just one but both rails. For comparison, the wiring in your walls is probably rated for 20 A current -- the reason the breaker trips if you overload a circuit is to prevent the excessive current from overheating the wire and setting fire to the house.
DeleteIf track circuits were built the way you suggested -- one rail continuous, the other interrupted with an insulator -- then at the ends of block segments, nearly half of the current would flow from the interrupted rail, through the track circuit relay (frying it), past the insulation in the other rail, through the track circuit battery/signalgenerator (frying it), and continuing in the interrupted rail. The simple description of the solution to this problem is to reconnect the rails through the insulation gap with a tuned electrical element, which at the frequency of the traction current behaves like a piece of wire but at the frequency used by the signaling system behaves like an insulator. These are the "impedance bonds" mentioned by Reality Check, that are getting stolen. (You also need them at traction substations, where the rails are connected together to one transformer output -- and the catenary to the other -- but you don't want this to close the track circuit.)
Modern practice is slightly more complicated than this.
First, you can feed multiple track circuit segments from a single signal-generator station by using different frequencies for them. Then at each insulation, you only "bar" the signal belonging to the segment that ends there, and let the other signals pass through alongside the traction current. Yes, a train in the segment next to the signal generator will close the circuit for all frequencies=segments, but sometimes this is acceptable behavior. Alternatively, if you like betting your head on your work, you can try to compare the power levels at the multiple frequencies, in effect "subtracting" the signal returning from the train in the nearby segment to see if there is any *remanining* power coming from a train in a farther segment.
Second, so far we have discussed insulations as literal cuts across the rail. Obviously we want to minimize these (hence the use of continuous welded rail, replacing shorter rails joined together with fishplates). There are fancy "bumpless" ways to include literal airgaps anyway (e.g. cutting the rails not perpendicularly to their length, but at a shallow angle, and throwing a lot of extra stiffening between the sleepers around the joint). But this is inconvenient, so we are even more interested in implementing an insulation with the rail structurally intact. Electrical engineering to the rescue; if the properties of the rail are accurately known, it is mostly possible to design an electrical element that can be attached to the rail and makes it behave as an insulator at some specific frequency.
Three, it turns out you don't need segmentation at all if you can use slightly more complex electronic equipment. If you use a modulated signal (like radio) then you can measure the time that it takes for the signal to propagate along the rails to the train, and from there back to the station. Which is pretty much synonymous with the distance of the train from the station. Because this method directly gives a power level for each distance from the station (with a fairly fine resolution), it can naturally "see through" a train and detect a train further up the line.
-- Hedgehog
@Anonymous Hedgehog: Yes, with a nitpick that Caltrain uses French-style autotransformers fed at 50kV (2x25kv) via a separate feeder from the catenary wires. (Voltage between that feeder and the catenary is a nominal 50kV. Think of it as -25kV and +25kV relative to ground., though it's actually a 180-degree phase angle.) So the return distance isn't to the nearest traction substation, it's to the nearest autotransformer. The circuit between the autotransformer to and its feeding substation (usually nearest substation) is the 50kV path.
DeleteCaltrain's units can draw 8MW, which is also stated as their regenerative braking power. So around 320A peak?
That aside, great post!
(the Anonymous who makes snarky remarks about outdated CPUC GO 26-D)
@Anonymous Hedgehog:
DeleteThe voltage drop isn't that severe though
Taking a random source (that isn't Quora... sorry about that in an earlier discussion :) ), the resistance per kilometer is 0.103 ohm at 50A and 0.178 ohm at 300A. Unfortunately there are no figures for 100A fitting the Caltrain EMUs, so we have to interpolate. Let's go with the 0.178 ohm worst case. That results in 17.8 volt for a block of 1km, which seems a bit long for a high capacity commuter railway. (As a comparison, on double track railways in Sweden the distance is usually 1-3km but the frequency is 16 2/3Hz (a third of 50Hz) so the resistance is slightly lower).
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/AC-resistance-values-of-running-rails_tbl2_342625769
It's not problem creating a circuit that can feed a DC current between the contiguous and the insulated rail, that can withstand the AC voltages that the traction current might generate, and also create a circuit that can detect DC current/voltage and withstand the same AC voltages.
Sure, this is how a DC track circuit system works, and it's a bit more complicated to create AC track circuits that can withstand AC electrification, but it's not that hard.
Also note that more or less all of the railway network in Sweden (of which most is electrified using 16kV 16 2/3Hz AC) uses this system of insulated and contiguous rail for the signalling system.
The most common way for the signalling system (in Sweden) to communicate with the trains is via balises, but the more modern way is to use balises only to tell the train exactly where it is (and then use wheel rotation to it'scalculate position relative to the last balis) and then use radio communication for in-cab signalling and train protection. These are the two methods that ERMTS/ETCS uses.
In other words, I can assure you that the system I describe is in use and has been in use since about when the first electric track circuits were put in operation. (I'm sure it was already in use elsewhere when it was first put in use in 1923 in Sweden. I have to admit that I assumed the sequence was the other way around - turns out that electric blocks was installed a few years before the first major electrification phase in the mid 1920's (the initial phase was the iron ore line in 1915, but I assume that that line used manually operated signals for many years after that, since each station would still be staffed for many years and it was a single track line).
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Complete side track: googles AI thingie for their search engine seems to make the search results dumber and dumber. I tried searching for the block distances in Sweden, and it seemed to think that I wanted to know the total length of the rail network. Duckgogo on the other hand found the correct result (from Wikipedia) and presented a correct summary among the first page search results. This is it, I'm finally switching the default search engine to duckgogo.
@Anon snarky at CPUC: Thanks! By "modern electrification" I was referring to the autotransformers, yes, implicitly calling them substations. They are simply the best way to electrify yet invented. Whether two-track lines are treated as two separate single-track lines, i.e. with their own feeders and autotransformers, or they are treated together -- with the catenary of one track serving as the feeder of the other, and sharing autotransformers; the latter setup is somewhat cheaper, but a tree falling onto only one track also shuts down the other track's electricity -- this schema is involved.
Delete@MiaM: I said 100 A for simplicity of calculation. As Anon corrected me, the Caltrain EMUs can throw 8 MW around, thus peak loads (taking the numbers you found at face value) would be more like 50 V. But this is beside the point -- which is that while *of course* it is possible to build equipment to withstand the stray traction currents, it is cheaper and more elegant to solve the problem in a different way.
I don't particularly know how balise-based and/or over-the-air radio systems compare to modern track circuit systems. They have different sets of advantages and drawbacks. But as far as I know, ETCS in particular has turned out to be notoriously more expensive than the modern national signalling systems it is supposed to replace.
-- Hedgehog
Side track re safety in general:
ReplyDeleteIt seems like there is a culture difference between for example USA and Europe, in that in USA the general thought process is that accidents happen and there is not much that can be done to mitigate them, but we can mitigate what happens when an accident happens. In Europe it seems like the thought process is the other way around, i.e. put most of the effort into reducing the likelihood of accidents happening.
Not sure to what extent this is relevant to train-car collisions, but somewhat relevant are the FRA crash worthiness requirements. Passenger trains in Europe sometimes turns into mush in accidents, be it if it's a collision with a freight train or any other type of accident. But accidents are so rare that travel by train is still by far the safest way of traveling.
(Arguably I would say that the most dangerous part of traveling by train is walking to/from the stations - most accidents that need a visit to some sort of health, when traveling within cities, are pedestrians falling. I.e. no other person/vehicle involved, just a slippery or uneven surface or similar. The data for this is based on a study an insurance company and it was in Sweden, so ice/snow would be a great factor here, but just bad design and maintenance of sidewalks and whatnot is a problem).
Your statement is largely true. What makes for a more interesting discussion is how EU regulations allowed Crash Energy Management to be developed while the FRA's vision did not.
DeleteAnother area is how FRA focus on loading guage does NOT consider implementation of level boarding. I don't know if that's true, but I heard that level boarding is forbidden because railway workers need to be able to hang onto the side of cars like it's a San Francisco cable car.
@Martin: that's California PUC's General Order 26-D, not federal regulation. However, federal ADA regulations preempt California regulations.
DeleteBoth approaches make sense in their respective contexts. In (most of) Europe, railfreight is next to dead, passenger trains dominate the network. Thus in Europe it makes perfect sense for the technical aspects of the system to be designed around the passenger use-case, with the minority use-case (freight) being systematically given the short stick. Hence European freight trains are overmotorized (i.e. "fast"), short, and made to carry expensive signaling equipment.
DeleteBy contrast, in most of the US and Canada (with the exception of the NEC and some adjacent areas) it is passenger traffic that is within a rounding error of zero. The network, being dominated by freight, is designed around its needs, and it is passenger trains that have to deal with unpredictable scheduling, with often low speed limits as a result of poor track conditions, etc.
@Clem.... Gross!!!!
DeleteThat almost further makes my point that there ought to be a federal standard that allows for level boarding. Here's what I don't get... If freight trains require extra clearance - side riding aside - due to the wagon width and dynamic envelope, why can't we get a passenger cars that are simply wider? The dynamic envelope would be tighter because we can specify that at stations, track alignment standards need to be higher. Furthermore, in Pueblo testing, we confirm that suspension is also tighter to prevent striking the platform. BART enters stations at ~40 mph with ADA compatible gaps, so technology does exist.
@Martin: but it's vitally important, vitally I tell you, to regulate how railroads build the gantries with which they load huge blocks of ice into non-mechanical refrigerated cars (i.e., cooled by melting ice), and clearances for loading those non-mechanical reefers with blocks of ice.
DeleteCalifornia PUC General Order 26-D , sec 3.13-3.15.
Regarding EU, I stumbled upon this good article that describes a lot of history on rail couplers, their strength, and how they arrived at DAC:
Deletehttps://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/documents/downloadPublic?documentIds=080166e5b0be793f&appId=PPGMS
It sounds like if WW2 hadn't happened, Europe would have been using the Russian standards.